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After seven years of planting in the codeso property in Tempatal, we needed more space. The nursery was overflowing with trees in need of transplantation.

Searching in lesser developed areas further away from the coast we stumbled upon a beautifull little finca in la Garita, a small town some 20 kilometers north east of La cruz.

This 8 hectare property with its diverse terain and a confluence of two year round flowing creeks, has been transformed during the last three years from degraded pasture land into a true little nature park.

In 2010 a property  next to our finca, came for sale.  With this 20 hectare finca  we consider the Codeso project to have enough space to be able to reach it’s goals.

All around, our neighbours in la Garita practice the slash and burn method in order to create pasture land and space for crops such as corn and rice. The people believe this is the only way for them to make a living of their land, but it is highly destructive to the flora and fauna.

We put all our effort into finding a manner in wich nature and generating an income for modern day life can coexist. Our hope is that people can cultivate their land without completely destroying the natural eco system and still create enough income from it to support themselfes.

We are experimenting with long-term native hardwood plantation and “short term” exotic woodplantation in combination with space for virgin forrest and space for crops and fruit trees. Plans are being made to hold free-range organic live stock.

Modernday life in the western world has an extremely high waste level. In our race for survival we tend to forget to apriciate what we have. Therefore we produce more of less quality and nature is seemingly being sacrficed for that.

In a place like la Garita, where people still work the land by hand and truely value what comes from it, modern agriculture is moving in and the people are drawn to a modern lifestyle. Being one of the poorest villages of the country, the level of comfort is verry low and working verry hard for litlle is not something we should romanticise. But this is the time to search for new ways and not continue in a one track minded way of destructive thinking. If we want to see nature we will have to preserve it.

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